How can I remove inactive subscribers from my list?

It's a good idea to remove inactive subscribers from your list from time to time. People who aren't opening your messages are not valuable to you as subscribers, and if they stop reading your messages, they may forget why you are sending them and mark your messages as spam.

How Long Is Too Long?

The amount of time that passes for a given subscriber to stop being an asset and start becoming a problem will vary depending on your list. In most cases, a good cut off point is six months.

If your list deals with seasonal products or if six months just isn't appropriate for your business, we strongly recommend 12 months as a hard cap. After a year of no opens, it is very likely that either the email address was abandoned or the subscriber now groups your messages with their unread spam.

Luckily, you can easily search your list for subscribers who have not opened a message from you recently, allowing you to delete people who aren't active members of your list.

Step By Step Instructions

Hover over the Subscribers tab and click Manage Subscribers.

Click the "Select Field" drop-down menu.

Click "No Opens" from the "Select Field" options.

Now, click the blank field to the right of No Opens and choose the date you'd like to search by. This will allow you to find all your subscribers who have not opened a message since that date, so if you want to see who hasn't opened your message in the last 30 days, choose a date 30 days ago.

Be sure to include another search term by clicking the + button. This field would be Date Added date is before, then choose the same date - this will ensure that newer subscribers who may just not have gotten to your messages yet won't be lumped together with the rest of the inactives.

Click the Search button, then scroll down to see the list of subscribers who haven't opened your messages since the date you chose.

To delete these subscribers, check the Erase box in the upper left of the list of subscribers to mark them all to be deleted, then click Delete to remove them from your list permanently.

If you have multiple pages of subscribers, you can repeat this process to remove them all.